President Donald Trump’s pledge to insure and escort oil and gas tankers in and out of the Middle East has kept pricing surges at bay, but he has about a week to show tangible progress before commodity prices continue spiking, energy and legal analysts said.
Setting up an emergency, government-subsidized insurance system for many hundreds of tankers is complicated enough, but also protecting them from missile and drone attacks adds another massive layer of uncertainty, experts said.
“If you don’t fix it in a week, the crude markets will get skeptical and impatient, which will translate into higher prices,” said oil forecaster Dan Pickering, founder of the Pickering Energy Partners consulting and research firm. “That’s a feedback loop that would put more pressure on the U.S. government.”
About 20% of global crude oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) flows pass through the narrow Strait of Hormuz that’s effectively blocked from the war in Iran. Qatar already has closed its LNG production, and Iraq has shuttered much of its oil production because it lacks the domestic storage capacity. It’s just a matter of time before more of the energy-producing Gulf states follow suit.
And resuming production is a process that takes weeks to ramp up. Under normal circumstances, about 150 vessels flow through the strait each day. Now, you can count them on your fingers. Most third-party insurance companies will not singlehandedly offer coverage under the massive risk profile. Multiple tankers already have reported damages in the region. For any insurance that is available, prices have risen close to five times.
“The pushback is, even if you have the insurance, are you going to feel safe doing it?” Pickering said. “If you have escorts, how do you know it’ll work and you can stop drone strikes?”
That said, because of the United States’ focus on energy affordability, it seems like a matter of when, and not if, tankers are freely flowing through the strait again, he added.
Late on March 3, Trump said the U.S. would offer “political risk insurance” for tankers and, “if necessary,” use the Navy to escort vessels through the strait.
The U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) said it is “ready to mobilize” its political risk insurance and guaranty products, but declined to offer details or timelines.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said March 4 the DFC will offer insurance at a “very reasonable price” and, “if necessary and when appropriate,” naval escorts would be utilized.
Although Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps declared it has “complete control” of the strategic waterway, Leavitt countered, “Iran will no longer be controlling the Strait of Hormuz and restricting the free flow of energy.”
“I don’t want to commit to a timeline, but certainly it is something that is being calculated actively by both the Department of War and the Department of Energy,” Leavitt said.
How it might work
There are many lives and billions of dollars at risk here, so it will take time to work out the insurance premiums and the specific terms and conditions, said Özlem Gürses, maritime and insurance law professor at the Tulane University Law School.
The government may take a similar approach as it did with terrorism insurance after the 9/11 attacks, working out public-private partnerships with subsidized governmental financial support to companies to keep insurance premiums relatively lower, she said.
“The risk is so huge, so it’s really difficult to guess,” Gürses said about potential timelines for implementing everything. “There are lots of question marks.”
The premiums will still be costly because it’s war risk insurance, so the key is whether they can be made affordable enough to justify the cost and the safety risk, she said.
Major shipper Maersk, for instance, has already said it’s temporarily suspending cargo bookings in the Middle East.
Amena Bakr, head of Middle Eastern energy insights for Kpler, said the firm’s energy trading experts “don’t think Trump’s vessel escort idea will work as vessels will be heavily exposed to Iranian missiles. And, even if they do manage to escort the vessels, the cost will be too high.”
But more international support may be coming. French President Emmanuel Macron said on social media that a coalition is being formed “in order to pool resources, including military ones, to resume and secure traffic in these maritime routes that are essential to the global economy.”
In the meantime, natural gas prices in Asia and Europe—highly dependent on Qatari supplies—have reached multiyear highs, while global crude oil prices have spiked almost 35% this year. The U.S. national average for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline has jumped from an early January low of $2.73 up to $3.20 on March—and it’s rising each day.
